Governor Christie: I’ll Be Damned If I Let Anything Get In The Way Of My Job

Transcript:

Eric Scott: This has obviously taken a toll on your family. This has got to be hard on your kids who are seeing and hearing - and some of what people are saying about you. What do you say to them? What did you say to your kids? And how has your family been through this?

Governor Christie: Well, first off, my family is great. And I’ll tell you, yesterday – you know we were all at the Super Bowl together – and my son Andrew, who had been away during a break from school to skiing, I saw him for the first time in a week this weekend. And he’s my oldest, he’s my twenty year-old who’s a sophomore at college. And I put my arm around him and I said, ‘are you doing ok with all this?’ And he said to me, ‘Dad, stop asking me that question. I’m fine. I’m fine. And don’t worry about it.’ So my wife and my kids – they know me and they know there’s nothing to be worried about because I’ve told them the same thing that I just told all the people who are listening tonight is I had nothing to do with this. And I’m so disappointed that this has happened. But I’m also determined to get to the bottom of it and to fix it once and for all if I haven’t fixed it already by the actions I’ve already taken, and then to move on to do the job that the people of New Jersey elected me to do, which is to try to continue to control property taxes, to try to reform education, to try to create jobs.

I mean, you know I had a meeting today with the Senate President and the Speaker to talk about our agenda as we move forward. And we had a really good hour and half meeting today talking about all those types of things and other issues that are on their agenda. So, I appreciate you asking about my family. You know I love them, but they’re fine. You know, the fact is that things happen like this in public life sometimes. You get disappointed by people. There are down moments. And I’m certainly not saying to anybody that we, any of us in my family have enjoyed this. But they also know that Dad has a job to do. And my job is to be governor of the state of New Jersey for the next four years. And I’m going to do that job. And I’m back to work, Eric. You know, I can’t afford to allow this to dominate my time the way it dominates the time of some folks in the media and some partisans. I’ve got to do my job every day. You know, when the Super Bowl was going on yesterday and we were trying to figure out how we are going to deal with 34,000 people moving out of there, I’m on the phone with my Chief Counsel, with the DOT Commissioner, with the head of NJ Transit, with my Authorities Unit Chief, to say, ‘what’s our plan going to be, guys?’

The thing about this is, while it dominates lots of other folks, it can’t dominate me because I have the responsibility for 8.9 million people. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anything get in the way of me doing my job. I took an oath a couple weeks ago. And so what the people of New Jersey need to know is two things about this, one more time. First, I had nothing to do with this. No knowledge, no authorization, no planning, nothing to do with this before this decision was made to close these lanes by the Port Authority. Secondly, that while I’m disappointed by what happened here, I am determined to fix it. I’ve told people all the time in this job, ‘I can’t promise you that we’re going to be perfect. But what I can promise you is we’re going to do our best and when there are mistakes, that we’re going to do our best to fix them.’ And that’s what we’re in the process of doing. And sometimes it’s going to take a little while, Eric, you know. But here’s what I don’t want to happen: I don’t want to have some internal investigation that doesn’t get to the bottom of this and then we find out more stuff later. I’ve told these guys, ‘be thorough, be efficient, so we can get to it as quickly as we can, but get me the story as best as you can tell it with as many folks as we can get to cooperate with talking to us.